


The Bed Stuy Summer

by entertheinferno



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Botany, Domestic Fluff, M/M, superheroes pretending not to be superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entertheinferno/pseuds/entertheinferno
Summary: “I uh,” Bruce hunches his shoulders more (almost up around his ears, like Clint remembers doing as a child) and catches Clint’s eyes, briefly.  “I need a place to stay for a bit.”Clint stares until Bruce looks at him again.  This time, behind the waterlogged melancholy, he seems a little determined.Clint throws a hand up and opens the door wider.  “Whatever you say, Doc.”





	The Bed Stuy Summer

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this uh.... four years ago and figured I could use an excuse to indulge while on break from school. 
> 
> I have not seen Avengers: Infinity War, don't talk to me about it, I don't really care. This is set after Avengers (2012) and before Avengers: Age of Ultron, pre-spideyboy's entrance to the movies, if you care about that. Clint is based on the Earth 616 Clint, especially the Fraction comics. I don't care about timelines, everything is a pick & choose. 
> 
> The book Clint refers to near the beginning of the fic is Ben Lerner's novel 10:04, in case anyone was wondering. 
> 
> Excessively self indulgent domesticity, Bruce taking care of plants, stupid fights, etc. etc. Comments encouraged & welcomed, this is mostly unbeta'd.

Bruce arrives on Clint’s doorstep during the first big storm of the summer.  It’s not quite hurricane season, not raining hard enough to worry about flooding in the streets, but it is the heavy mid-summer rain that creeps through July; big crashes of thunder that shake the old lead window panes, punctuated by the staccato of rain tapping out a syncopated rhythm on the gutters.  It’ll pass within the hour, Clint knows, and if he peers out the window he can already see the sun peeking out through the grey clouds that hover over the East River. 

He’s not expecting guests, and he almost convinces himself that the gentle rap on his door was imagined, until the sound returns with more insistence.  He rolls off the couch and to his feet, leaving his book upside down to mark his place. The knocking is confusing. It sounds urgent but anyone he knows who needed him this badly would have barged in by now.  His locks aren't very good. 

He opens the door to a morose and dripping man.  Bruce has his shoulders hunched up, his curly, salt and pepper hair is hanging limply around his face, dripping onto the nicotine stained carpet.  His glasses are so speckled with raindrops Clint isn’t sure Bruce can even see him at all. 

“I uh,” Bruce hunches his shoulders more (almost up around his ears, like Clint remembers doing as a child) and catches Clint’s eyes, briefly.  “I need a place to stay for a bit.” 

Clint stares until Bruce looks at him again.  This time, behind the waterlogged melancholy, he seems a little determined.  

Clint throws a hand up and opens the door wider.  “Whatever you say, Doc.” 

Bruce shuffles inside and toes his sensible (ugly) loafers off in the doorway.  Clint stares down at his dress socks and misses half of what Bruce is saying about needing to leave Stark Tower for a bit, too lost in a winding train of thought about wet socks and the feeling of your feet, wet and shriveling, stuck on damp fabric.  

“Clint?” Clint shakes his head, looking up.  He’s still hovering with the door open, staring at the space where Bruce had been standing.  Bruce has clearly finished whatever he had to say and is waiting for a response. He’s starting to shrink in on himself again.   _ Funny how the big green guy manages to get real small a lot of the time, _ Clint thinks. 

“Sorry uh,” Clint manages to get out, closing and bolting the door before gesturing widely at the apartment.  “Hardly got the amenities of Stark over here but uh, I’ve got a pullout. The ceiling leaks and I don’t know how to get the cable box to work but you uh, you can stay as long as you need.”  

He figures it must be enough for Bruce because he just nods, smiles a little, and asks after the shower.

 

-o-o-o-

 

He doesn’t bother to clarify any of what he missed out on when Bruce first arrived.  He doesn’t really care that much. He figures anyone who’s stayed with Tony for this long must need a break, the doc especially.  Tony is like the opposite kind of neurotic, which is to say, the kind of neurotic Clint finds unbearable. Bruce seems a lot more chilled out.  It’s something Clint can appreciate. 

Anyway, his apartment has always been a touchdown point.  Tony will show up to yell at him about money or metal or robots or whatever; Tasha used to crash on his couch (or in his bed), between missions, though it happens less now that she’s semi-permanently in DC; and Kate essentially lives with him when she isn’t in classes.  Even Steve used to stop by once in awhile, before they relocated him. He was a Brooklyn boy at heart, and he liked what Clint had done about the building. “Combating aggressive, white gentrification” or something. Either way, Clint’s apartment is kind of a neutral home base for a lot of people.  Open to everyone, most of the time. 

When Bruce emerges from the shower, he’s wearing a tattered sweater and an ill-fitting pair of khakis, rubbing at his hair with a towel.  

“I hope it’s ok, there was a box in there-”

“Yeah, that’s all fair game.  Kate’s idea.  We get a lotta guests.”  Clint barely glances over his shoulder, and goes back to his book.  His socked feet are propped on the coffee table, one swaying back and forth to an imagined rhythm, nearly knocking over a can of PBR with every swing. 

“Oh Kate.  She’s uh…”

“The Other Hawkeye.”  Clint says. 

Bruce comes around to sit with him on the couch.  He watches Clint’s feet for a second before reaching out to slide the can just slightly too far from the impending collision zone. 

Clint grins at his book and gestures lazily towards the kitchenette.  “Better stuff in the fridge if you want any.” 

Bruce shakes his head, but gets up to investigate the kitchenette without asking.  Clint appreciates that. He’s getting to a good part, and isn’t much in the mood to explain the working order of the apartment.  It’s easy enough - don’t ask stupid questions, don’t break things, don’t go into Clint’s room. Buy beer when you leave. Easy.

“Can I make tea?” 

Or not so easy.

Clint shrugs and nods.  “Eh, sure I guess. Not my tea.”

Bruce smiles a bit and puts water on, taking it off the heat before it whistles.  Clint wonders idly how long Bruce is going to stay, watching him move through the kitchen quietly, his book half forgotten.  

Bruce comes back to the couch with a big, chipped Ikea mug.  Clint refuses to drink tea, even though Kate says authoritatively that it has more caffeine than coffee does.  Clint thinks she’s probably right, she’s a lot smarter than him, but he refuses to give up his coffee. Coffee has kept him awake and alert on many sleepless nights, and he feels like if he switched now he would be betraying something.  His eyes must glaze over a bit again because he feels Bruce’s hand on his shoulder for a second, drawing him back into the world. 

“Salinger?” Bruce asks, curiously.  Clint realizes then, a little slow on the uptake, that he and Bruce don’t know each other at all.  The first time they met they were standing in the wreckage of his city (because as much as Tony hates to admit it, Clint is kind of the tri-state avenger and (even if he’s shitty at it sometimes) the boroughs, at least Brooklyn, are kind of his turf.)  They’ve rarely seen each other since then- the occasional mission, the occasional meeting, Clint’s occasional trips to Stark Tower. They’re both pieces on a board much bigger than them, and it seems they rarely play in tandem. Clint’s still unsure, half the time, why Fury even included him in the big-boy lineup.  He’s not complaining but sometimes he thinks he ended up on team save-the-world because he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and it turned into the wrong place at the right time. Or something like that. 

The most he knows about the Doc is what’s in his file, and he tries not to read any of the information in those that he doesn’t really need to know.  Lotta personal information on file that Clint’s not so sure working partners need to have access to. Privacy and such. Even so, he wonders if the file says anything about how incredibly small it can feel, sitting next to him.  Bruce isn’t exactly a big guy when he isn’t hulked out, but there’s something about him that fills up Clint’s apartment in a weird way. He reminds Clint of an elephant, the way he moves, the way he holds himself, his eyes. He’s got big sad eyes and a strange, gentle face, and a very large and angry thing living under his skin.  

Big sadness comes with big anger, Clint thinks. 

Bruce is still looking at Clint expectantly when Clint realizes he’s drifted off again. It's been ages since Bruce asked his question.

“Ah, yeah,”  Clint scrubs his face with his hand, drapes the book over his legs.  “He’s my favorite. Hey did anyone ever tell you about how elephants never forget anything?  They remember everything, and they get sad like we do. I watched a documentary on it with Kate a little while ago.”

“Oh.”  Bruce says, his face twisting into a confused sort of smile.  Clint is off his rocker, but the doc goes on with it, nods his head, and says something wild about elephants in mourning.  Clint bets Bruce feels just as small as he does sometimes. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

Clint comes home one day, about a week after Bruce’s arrival, to find a strange, potted plant resting delicately on his kitchen counter.  It’s not small, the leaves are easily bigger than Clint’s palm, but the stems are so slender it seems like a stiff breeze could snap them all in two.  Clint eyes it suspiciously, gets a beer out of the fridge, and quickly walks away. He has an intense urge to water it, but has a sneaking suspicion it would die if he tried. 

Instead he goes to his room, rereads the first few pages of  _ Catcher in the Rye _ , thinks about needing a new book, thinks about his library fines, thinks about whether or not the Brooklyn Public Library would wipe his fines because he’s an avenger, thinks about whether or not Tony would get them to wipe the fines because he’s an avenger, thinks about asking Bruce to ask Tony to get the Brooklyn Public Library to wipe his fines.  He digs out the burner phone Kate bought him at a 7-eleven from the depths of his bed and texts Kate instead, asking her to find him a book to read. 

He ventures out of his room for a brief moment and becomes immediately irate upon seeing the plant.  He digs around in his closet, finds a bunch of old, cartoon targets that someone bought him years ago as a holiday gift, and hangs them up against the far wall.  He shoots until Bruce gets home, planning his line of questions about the plant that’s watching him from the corner of the room. 

When Bruce unlocks the front door, Clint is slumped against the wall, surrounded by arrows, replacing the fletching on each methodically.  Bruce is saddled with bags, and he barely glances over at Clint before moving towards the kitchenette, setting everything down on the island.  

“I brought library books from Kate.  You should really pay your fines.” 

Clint narrows his eyes at Bruce and half-heartedly brandishes an arrow.  “Superheroes don’t pay library fines.” 

Bruce just rolls his eyes at Clint and begins unloading the bags.  He got groceries, something Clint routinely forgets to do. He gets up and shuffles over to help.  Mostly he just peeks at the books while Bruce stocks the cabinets and the fridge. 

“I’ve read this already.”  Clint frowns, pulling one of the novels out of the bag.  Bruce pauses his rummaging in the fridge (more full of food now than it’s ever been) and peers over Clint’s shoulder, a little too close for comfort.  Clint tenses. Bruce pretends not to notice, reaching over to take the book and flip it over so he can read the blurb. He’s wearing glasses, new ones, big, black wireframes that fill up his face.  He looks real good, Clint thinks, like one of the rumpled Columbia professors he used to see when Kate would drag him into upper Manhattan. Clint thinks that in another life Bruce probably would’ve been one of those real smart kids who get rich by virtue of their intelligence, and spend their whole life in school, going to fancy dinner parties, making everyone feel stupid in comparison.  Kind of like Tony but maybe a little less obnoxious. 

“I thought this guy was a poet?”  Bruce says, setting the book back down on the counter. 

“Yeah I guess.  I liked the book.  He’s kind of annoying.”  Clint shrugs. It’s some New York dude writing about his life and pretending it’s fiction.  Clint didn’t hate it, but some parts made him mad. There’s a bit in it about the New Yorker, and faking letters, pretending at something until it can almost be real.  Clint kind of liked that. 

“Do you have to water this?”

Bruce looks up and blinks at Clint.  His eyebrows furrow just slightly, enough that Clint wishes he’d sounded less annoyed.  He realizes that the plant is maybe a little bit bigger than a plant, that it means Bruce is comfortable here.  Or as comfortable as he can be when he’s basically hiding out from Tony in a place that Tony visits often enough to find him eventually.  Bruce is hiding out, but not from Clint. 

“Also uh, what is it?”  Clint amends, rubbing at his neck.  It’s the closest to acceptance he can offer. 

“It’s a cast-iron plant,  _ aspidistra elatior _ ,” Bruce rattles off, with a hesitant smile.  __ “You just have to spritz it every once in a while, and dust the leaves.  It’s easy.” 

Clint stares blankly at Bruce.  

“Ok, I’ll bring you home something you don’t have to water tomorrow, if that’ll make you happy.”  Bruce smiles at him, shaking his head. 

“I never had much of a green thumb.”  Clint says mildly, squeezing past Bruce to get to the coffee pot.  It has about a cup's worth left from the morning and Clint dumps it in a mug and takes a sip before he catches Bruce’s eye and begrudgingly puts it in the microwave. 

“Why don’t you just make a new pot?”  Bruce says, wrinkling his nose. 

“Listen doc, I don’t got time for that.  No use wastin’ what’s already there.”  

Bruce just shakes his head. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

It’s around 4:30.  Clint came up to the roof at 2 when he woke in a cold sweat, and his internal clock is doing a damned good job keeping track of how long he’s been outside.  It’s still a little too early for sunlight to be peeking over the horizon, but the sky has lightened from indigo to a muted grey, clouds rolling in across the city.  The streets sweat beneath him, and he swings his feet over the ledge, watching the stillness. 

He dreams a lot about things he doesn’t really understand, and about people he didn’t want to kill.  He’s not unused to it, but sometimes they’re just a little too vivid, the blood too bright, and he has to wake himself before his chest seizes up.  He used to wake up mid-panic, adrenaline rushing, fight or flight raring to go. Comparatively, waking up with a lead weight in his chest isn’t too bad.  He doesn’t miss feeling like he’s drowning every time he drifts off. 

He should probably talk to Natasha about it though.  They’ve been worse lately, so bad he doesn’t sleep at all sometimes.  He saw the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychs after the whole Loki fiasco, had learned a lot about how to tamp things down, how to talk about what he was seeing.  They had him on meds so he could sleep without dreaming at all. He’s off them now, maybe shouldn’t be. 

It just feels like it shouldn’t be a problem anymore, and he doesn’t want to talk about it like it is one.  

Instead he just climbs up to the roof, swings his legs over the ledge, watches the sparrows wake up.  They nest in the cornices of all the buildings around here, making little homes that hang over the three or four-story drops.  Clint likes watching them fly in the mornings. He used to wish he could do that. 

“Funny naming yourself after a bird when you can’t even fly.”  He says, to no one but himself. He’d jokingly asked Tony to build him a pair of wings after Natasha told him about Falcon but Tony had refused on grounds of “ _ They’d be broken before you even made it out of Manhattan.”   _ Probably a good call. 

Clint didn’t put his hearing aids in before he came up, so he doesn’t notice Bruce until he’s standing right beside him, offering him a mug.  Clint almost thinks it’s tea until he takes a sip and realizes Bruce made him coffee. Bruce struggles to perch himself beside Clint, sloshing tea all over himself and down the side of the building.  Clint smiles into his mug. It’s the small things. 

Once Bruce is settled, looking serene against the early morning. He catches Clint’s eyes.  “I hope the coffee’s ok.” 

It’s dim, not really the perfect light to read lips, but Clint’s got practice.  He smiles and gives Bruce a thumbs up. 

“Just so you know I don’t have my aids in, gotta be lookin’ at ya if you wanted to talk.”

“Oh.”  Bruce just shrugs.  “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”  He turns away from Clint to look out at the city.  Gives him a choice. 

Clint, suddenly, doesn’t feel like being silent so much.  

“How come you don’t drink coffee?”  Clint asks, and Bruce shifts his body, bracing one foot on the roof and letting the other dangle, orienting himself so he can face Clint comfortably.  

“Caffeine and the big guy don’t really mix, to be honest.”  Bruce says. His mouth curls like he’s laughing at his own joke, even though it’s not really funny and then catches himself, smiling ruefully at Clint.  “I’m kidding.” 

“Oh?”  Clint figures he must’ve missed something that was in the tone.  

Bruce takes a long sip from his mug.  “I just don’t like it. Tea reminds me of my family, of quiet.  It’s a little more intentional.” 

Clint isn’t sure what to say back, and Bruce doesn’t seem to expect much.  His focus slides to somewhere behind Clint, where Brooklyn stretches out into an ocean of cardboard homes.  It’s a precious, tentative peacefulness that Clint can’t help but break.

“Why’d you come here, Doc?”  He tries not to sound accusatory.  Neither of them have brought up anything, really, since Bruce arrived.  It hasn't felt much like Clint giving a teammate refuge from some bigger, haunting thing.  More like getting a surprisingly pleasant and (presumably) temporary new roommate. 

Bruce is easy to live with.  Clint forgets he’s even there some of the time, he slips in and out so easily.  The easiest way to identify a second body in the house is how clean things have gotten, the neatly folded sheets at the end of the futon every morning, the fact that none of the mugs have coffee rings in the bottom anymore, how the recycling gets taken out, that the fridge is full.  Clint wakes up some afternoons expecting an empty apartment and finds Bruce in the kitchenette, leaned up against the island, reading a book, drinking tea, living. 

And they never have to talk about any of the other stuff.  It’s easy to pretend  _ New York _ never happened, even though they’re living adjacent to it.  They don’t remark on the trucks that are still carrying rubble out of the city to the landfills in New Jersey, Clint never hooks up the cable box so they don’t have to watch the news.  His S.H.I.E.L.D issued cell phone is cracked in half and hidden behind the industrial sized bottle of bleach under the sink. Bruce never answers Tony’s calls. 

It’s not that it didn’t happen, though, and Clint is still working, just on a smaller scale.  The big stuff is a little too big for him, right now. It was never his specialty in the first place.

Bruce is just so good at being  _ small _ that Clint has a hard time even remembering him at ground zero, it seems so unlikely.  He drifts easily through domestic space, doesn’t cause much of a fuss, leaves out bandages and antiseptic for Clint to come home to.  

There’s no expectations, no requirements, no anything. But Clint still doesn’t know why Bruce came  _ here _ , of all places, to his shitty apartment in Bedstuy, instead of staying holed up in Stark Tower doing science in a safe, protected bubble.  Bruce is maybe the most reluctant out of any of them to be a part of the whole Avengers  _ thing _ , and Clint gets that, but he’s not exactly the perfect safe haven for runaways.  He’s too tired to bother telling Fury and Tony and everyone to fuck off and leave him alone. It’s not like he can do the same for Bruce. 

Bruce has been waiting for Clint to come back down to Earth.  He waits till Clint’s out of his own head, and then chooses his words carefully.  

“I… Tony is a lot, for me, most of the time.”  Clint snorts and Bruce smiles, shakes his head.  “I know we don’t get much of a choice in all of this but, I don’t know.  Tony moves a little too fast for me. I need time to come around, to decide how  _ in  _ it I want to be, you know?  I at least need the illusion of that decision.  It’s kind of selfish of me, I guess.” He turns away then, swinging his other leg over the edge.  

Clint watches their feet swing off time with one another and gets angry and sad and frustrated and then sad all over again.  Everyone wants choices and options and backup plans and exit routes and Clint was always really good at that but suddenly it seems like all of those have failed, for him, for all of these people.  It’s not fair. It makes him feel like a child. 

“Fuck.” 

Bruce looks over at Clint, head tilted to the side like a dog.

“Uh.”  Clint doesn’t know what he wants to say, or how to do it.  Talking is not his strong suit. He slept for two hours, he’s angry, he’s still got the nauseous dream weight in his stomach, and he can’t go back to sleep, he needs this headache to go away, he wants to fix something.  He doesn’t know how to do any of it, and more than anything he wants, viscerally, to climb into the sparrow’s nest below them or launch himself off the edge of the roof and flit away, just for a minute.

“I’m gonna get more coffee.  You should come in.” He swings his feet around until they’re touching the roof, braces himself to stand.  His knees ache. 

“I’m gonna wait to watch the sunrise.”  Bruce says, gesturing towards the brightness that’s finally fading in across the sky.  Clint leaves him be. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

They don’t talk about it again, and Clint tries to stop worrying so much about fixing something he can’t fix.  Nothing changes, and they keep drifting. 

It’s been just a couple of weeks, and living with Bruce is starting to feel like learning how to dance.  They’re settling but it takes some resetting to do it. Clint starts getting up earlier, when he can manage, just to get a glimpse of Bruce, sleep rumpled and kind of sweaty, grumbling through the kitchen while he makes breakfast.  He starts liking how Bruce looks when he can get him just a little bit riled. Sometimes all it takes is a bunch of dirty dishes left in the sink after spending an indefinite amount of time unwashed in Clint’s room, or being a little too barbed when he comes home after a long day.  He thinks Bruce must not mind too much because, even after a big fight, he doesn't tell Clint to stop pushing. Clint thinks Bruce is probably used to people being really scared of him, or really afraid of shattering his control. Clint’s got a pretty good idea about how control and focus work and he doesn’t think what he’s doing is going to make the green guy show up. 

“Plus,” as Kate points out one afternoon, after Bruce has trailed up to the roof to calm down after a fight about the clogged pipes, “He’s kinda cute when he’s a little mad.”

Clint tosses a pillow at her and she grins. 

Things around them are calming down.  Tony calls Bruce less, they hook up the cable box, the wifi.  Clint starts having enough time to do landlord things other than fighting shitty crime dudes in the dark of night.  Kate comes by more and more, does her homework for the class she’s taking at Columbia in the living room, drinks beer with Clint on the roof. 

Then Bruce gets a job. 

Clint doesn’t even realize at first.  Bruce has a bad habit of taking in stray, leafy green things, and the presence of flora in the apartment has increased exponentially since Bruce’s arrival.  He doesn’t know enough about plants to know that a lot of what Bruce starts bringing home are very rare and very expensive. He just writes down the instructions Bruce gives him on the long piece of paper he taped to the wall and tries to take care of them. 

He doesn’t notice really until it’s late July.  He’s hanging off the couch, staring at a patch of sunlight on the floor, thinking about repainting the apartment, thinking about his brother, thinking about getting an AC unit, when he realizes that his apartment has become a veritable greenhouse.  If he squints enough that his vision blurs his whole living room is mostly just green. 

There’s a fern next to the TV, ivy on the shelves, a huge jade plant on a side table Clint doesn’t think he’s ever owned, orchids on the kitchen island, an imposing, leafy monstrosity next to the door to his room, and another one inside, next to his mattress.  Clint thinks he must be really out of it if he didn’t notice until now. He’s afraid to start counting to see how many there really are. 

He texts Kate.  

2:07 p.m.

_ kate when’d we gt so many plants _

2:10 p.m.

_ Did you just notice? _

2:15 p.m. 

_ jst didn’t realize there were so mny _

2:25 p.m.

_ You’re stupid.  Talk to Bruce _

Clint puts his phone under the couch cushions and looks at all the leafy, foreboding  _ things _ around him.  There’s no way he’s not going to kill one of them.

 

-o-o-o-

 

Turns out Bruce finagled his way into a job at a greenhouse.  To be more specific: Bruce got a job at the goddamn Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and wasn’t going to tell Clint. 

Clint isn’t sure where his anger starts and ends.  The fact that Bruce even managed to get a job when everybody on the planet knows who Dr. Bruce Banner is, what he can be, makes Clint nervous.  They’re not storybook heroes, they didn’t do a clean job last time, and Bruce is more of a big bad wolf in the public conscious than a knight in shining armor.  

Kate tells him he’s being unreasonable, which he knows he is, but he can’t help it.  He’s worried about Bruce, worried about what people will say, worried about… he doesn’t even know what but he’s worried and it’s making him angry.  

He waits for Bruce to come home, smokes cigarettes on the roof, shoots too many holes in the wall to excuse, cleans his whole bedroom and makes a mess of it again.  He’s buzzing with energy by the time Bruce unlocks the door. 

He’s got a small, spindly plant cradled in his arms, and whole bundle of bags from the hardware store.  He tosses his keys on the counter and sets everything down, trailing his fingers gently through the leaves of the plant.  

“Where do you go every day?”  Clint’s watching Bruce out of the corner of his eye, feigning a lightness he learned from Natasha at her most venomous. 

Bruce glances at him.  He’s taking what look like heat lamps out of the bags, along with a carton of delicate, exotic flowers. 

“Work.”

Clint doesn’t even know what to say, which isn’t a great start to a reasonable conversation.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me you got a job?” Clint’s smoking inside, which Bruce frowns at.  All the windows are open, and Clint excavated two ancient box fans from the storage room to make a cross breeze so he wouldn’t stink the whole place up, but the smoke still swirls through the air around them.  Bruce crosses his arms.

“I didn’t think I needed you to keep you informed on everything I do.” 

Clint sputters and drops the cigarette in the nearly full ashtray. 

“I dunno I figured since you’re squatting in my house you could tell me about what you’re doing all the time.” 

“I didn’t think I’d been such an inconvenience to you.”  Clint sees Bruce getting angry the same time Bruce notices.  He closes his eyes and breathes in, deflating a little bit. His shoulders are tense, his back rigid.  If Clint has learned anything from watching Bruce move over the last few weeks it’s that everything he does is in increments, intentional, with purpose.  This is the most tense he’s ever been, trying not to burst out of his own skin. Clint doesn’t have the self-preservation instinct to back off. 

“You really think this is a good idea?” 

Bruce’s face goes dark.  “A good idea? Getting a job? A research position? This is what I’m supposed to be doing, Clint.”  Bruce pulls at his hair. “I’m not--I shouldn’t be  _ here _ , I shouldn’t have to hide away from what I care about because there’s this--this  _ fucking _ ,” He spits the word out with more bitterness than Clint has ever heard. “ _ Thing _ inside of me.  This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.” 

“I hate to break it to you doc but nothin’ ever goes as planned around here.”  Clint wants to laugh. This is one of the more stupid fights he’s backed himself into, and he’s gotten into a fair share of dumb brawls.  It’s easier when you can swing fists. He doesn’t know what to say, how to explain himself. 

“I told you I wanted a choice, Clint, I told you that’s why I came here.  This is my choice.” Bruce is in the living room now, standing across from Clint.  Clint doesn’t remember getting to his feet, but his hands are in fists. Bruce is less tense, but the calm on his face is more disconcerting than his anger was.  

“We’re not people who get to choose, that’s all I know, I’m not trying to pretend I’m something I’m not.” 

Bruce stares at Clint.  “You had some say in what you became, Clint.  I didn’t get that luxury.” 

That’s not something either of them knows what to say to.  Bruce almost looks like he regrets it before it’s out of his mouth and Clint leaves.  He slams the door behind him and goes to the roof, knowing that Bruce won’t follow. 

Clint stays out there for hours, smokes the rest of his pack until he feels nauseous.  He climbs down the fire escape when the last butt is just an ember on the roof and walks to the nearest bodega, buys a sandwich, buys a pack of Winstons, thinks about his brother, walks home.  He clambers back up to the roof without going inside. 

Hours pass.  The sun sets.  Bruce ventures outside.  Clint watches him. 

Bruce is sitting on the stoop, cell phone in hand, mug beside him.  He calls someone, Clint can’t hear what he says, and then goes back inside.  

He’s smoking again, halfway through the second pack when Bruce comes to see him.  He’s beyond the point of nausea, but seeing Bruce makes him feel sick all over again.  Bruce approaches slowly, less tense, but pale. He has his glasses on, is wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that all but swallows him.  Clint realizes it’s been raining, on and off, when Bruce silently hands him a dry sweatshirt, eyeing Clint’s damp body with a begrudging amusement.  

He takes the half smoked cigarette out of Clint’s fingers and sits down, taking a slow drag.  He holds the smoke in for too long, coughs a little on the exhale. He scrubs at his face with his free hand.  

“Do you want me to leave?”  

Clint doesn’t look at him.  “No.” 

“I don’t want you to feel like you need to enable something you don’t agree with.”  

Clint rolls his eyes.  “Fuck ethics. I just don’t get it.  I don’t want…” He doesn’t know what he wants. 

Bruce nudges Clint’s foot with his own, hard enough to get Clint to actually turn towards him.  

“I-” Bruce hesitates.  “It’s not really a job.  I’m doing research with them, but for my gain more than anyone else’s.  There’s a chance--” He pauses again, considering his words. Clint steals the cigarette back and drags, exhaling into Bruce’s face. 

“Alright-- I think I might be able to… I think there might be a way to disable the green guy, at least temporarily.  It’s kind of a medicine thing, a serum, that I might be able to develop.  If I took it all the time it would be like he wasn’t there, mostly.”  Bruce looks almost guilty for admitting it. 

“I need the plants, and some of the resources they have there.  There’s a lot I can do on my own but they can provide the specimens I need to run tests, a lot of stuff I can do here, or at one of Tony’s ancillary labs.  I just need to know if this is something I have to be or if I can choose to do it differently. I don’t want to go back to who I was before, but I can’t keep walking on broken glass.” 

“You hate him that much? Isn’t he you?”  Bruce takes the cigarette back and shrugs.

“He feels like all the bad parts of me at their worst.  Like I don’t get to be a regular person now.  Sometimes it feels like I have to be my best self all of the time to keep him under control.”  

Clint thinks about all the stupid fights he and Bruce have had, about laundry and coffee and dishes, smoking cigarettes inside, never rinsing out beer cans, all the holes Clint has put in the walls, all the dirt and weird bugs Bruce has accidentally tracked in, about Clint coming home bruised and bloody after work.  That seems pretty normal, to Clint. 

“I still don’t get it.”  

Bruce smiles softly at Clint.  “Our metric for normal is a little fucked, Clint.”  

Clint shrugs.  “What the fuck is normal even.”  

“I don’t know if I know.” 

Clint doesn’t know how to explain any of this to Bruce, how wrong he thinks he is.  At the same time, he thinks he would change some things, some pretty big things, in his life if he could.  But he can’t and so he doesn’t think about it. It’s easy. 

Bruce is leaning against him a little now, his shoulder pressed up against Clint’s.  He’s hyper-aware of the points of contact, of Bruce’s steady breathing, the weight of him.  It’s overwhelming. He shakes two more cigarettes out of the pack, lights them both, hands one to Bruce. 

Bruce takes a drags and laughs, making himself cough again.  “It’s like freshman year all over again. Winstons?”

“It’s what Barney smoked.” 

“Your brother?”

Clint ducks his chin and shrugs, pulling hard.  He still wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what, doesn’t know how to.  Beneath their feet the street buzzes with unusual traffic, noise filtering up to them.  

“Are all the plants for the research?”  

Bruce stills for a moment.  He shakes his head. “No. Most of them are just, well, you seemed to like them.”  

Bruce is smiling down at his feet.  He almost looks bashful. The brake lights from the street reflect off the raindrops on Bruce’s glasses, almost obscuring the way his eyes fall, the sweep of his eyelashes, the slight flush across his nose.  Clint takes a drag of his cigarette and looks at Bruce. He still doesn’t really know what to say but he knows what he wants, at least one thing. 

He reaches out and touches Bruce’s jaw, tilts his face up, and leans in to kiss him.  It’s nothing--Clint’s lips are chapped, he’s sweaty and rain damp, and Bruce tastes like cigarettes, smells like laundry detergent and wet dirt.  It’s nothing but it’s what Clint wants and he presses further, waits for Bruce’s mouth to slacken beneath his before he lets go, lets his fingertips drag against Bruce’s jaw for half of a second before he stands up.  He flicks his cigarette into the street, puts his hand on top of Bruce’s head. 

“Don’t go, ok?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just tangles his fingers in Bruce’s hair before turning away to walk inside. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

They don’t really talk about the roof, either.  

It’s funny, Clint thinks, in retrospect how they move in big circles around one another.  Things don’t get tense again, exactly, but it’s a little weird. That’s fine, though. Clint’s weird, he can deal with weird. 

Bruce makes a point of working at home, after the fight.  He still goes out a lot, is usually gone when Clint wakes up, but gets back long before the sun sets.  

He makes Clint clear out the walk-in so he can set up shop there.  He’s got all his weird little blooms and a bunsen burner and heat lamps and a bunch of weird shit that Clint knows Bruce took from Tony’s lab without asking.

Clint tries not to go stir-crazy, but sometimes seeing Bruce makes him feel stir-crazy, or something.  

He still doesn’t totally know what he wants, though he can easily pinpoint a few things.  One, that he doesn’t want Bruce to go anywhere, two, that he thinks it would kind of actually suck if Bruce’s serum worked out (though he doesn’t want to touch the why of that, exactly), and three, that he wants Bruce to kiss him this time, because he definitely can’t do it again.  

Kate thinks he’s incredibly stupid, which is unsurprising.  She’s gotten into a habit of always finding the least opportune time to drop in on Clint during the day.  Usually he's on the roof smoking cigarettes, or day-drinking in front of a bad movie, or moping. His moping isn’t mutually exclusive to the first two activities, but he considers it especially prominent when he’s shooting holes in the wall or reading terrible contemporary fiction.  

Kate decides he needs to “get out more.”  

Clint’s cooking dinner for her and Bruce.  It’s the first week of August and the heat is unbearable.  Clint still hasn’t bought an AC so they have about 5 fans going, trying to get the stagnant air to move somewhere.  It’s not working very well. 

Clint had “discovered” youtube and decided that cooking something for Kate and Bruce with his newfound knowledge would prove to both of them that he wasn’t “in a funk.”  It clearly wasn’t working. 

“I think Kate’s right!”  Bruce supplies helpfully, taking a big sip of his wine.  Clint glowers at both of them. “You never leave the house unless you’re buying cigarettes or going to beat someone up, Clint, it’s not very healthy.” 

“I jog sometimes.”  Clint supplies.  Kate rolls her eyes. 

“Go get your library card fixed, go the the park, go see a movie not-” She holds a finger up to him, anticipating his interjection. “On your crappy TV.” 

“Guess I’ll just eat alone.”  Clint grumbles, brandishing the colander at the pair of them.  

Bruce just rolls his eyes, downs the last of his wine, and gets up to help Clint.  

He touches the underside of Clint’s wrist as he brushes past him, smiling when Clint twitches just a little bit. 

“What can I do?” 

For supposedly helping, Bruce is mostly just pushy in the kitchen.  He gets in Clint’s way on purpose, stealing cherry tomatoes from the cutting board while Clint chops them in half.  And he pushes Clint around, putting his hands on Clint’s waist to move him away from whatever he’s trying to get to. 

The meal should’ve taken 30 minutes at most to make but it takes almost an hour because Clint keeps getting too distracted by Bruce touching him.  He’s waiting for the pasta to cook, drinking a beer and trying to help Kate finish the New York Times crossword puzzle. He has his elbows on the counter, leaning halfway across so he can look at the paper upside down.  He’s not paying attention, hand loose around the neck of his beer, when Bruce presses himself up against Clint’s back. Clint flushes and tries to turn around just as Bruce snags the beer out of his loose grip and backs off, slipping past Clint.  He grins when he catches his eye and Clint turns so red he has to go into the bathroom to avoid Kate’s knowing stare. 

When he comes back the pasta has overcooked so much they have to make a new box. 

After dinner Kate calls an Uber and heads back to her own apartment.  She gives Bruce a considering look and a hug when she leaves, and clobbers Clint on the back of his head.  

They do the dishes together, Bruce washing, somehow managing to get soap all over his shirt.  He brushes his fingertips against Clint’s every time he hands him a dish, lips quirked upwards, pretending not to notice Clint blushing.  

“I’m gonna change.”  Bruce says, looking down at his damp and soapy button down.  Clint shrugs and gets another beer, settles on the couch while Bruce rummages through a dresser they found on the side of the street.  

Clint doesn’t have the dignity to pretend not to watch Bruce when he takes off his shirt.  His skin is almost tanned, and he’s surprisingly fit for someone who spends most of his time hunched over a desk.  Clint shifts his gaze away just in time for Bruce to know what he was really paying attention to, but with a little bit of plausible deniability thrown in.  

Bruce comes to stand by the couch, just behind Clint, looking out the windows at the sky, getting darker and darker by the minute now that the sun has mostly gone down. 

“I’m gonna go to the roof.”  Bruce says. He touches Clint’s face for a brief moment, his fingertips a little rough where they drag over Clint’s cheekbone.  Just as quickly, he reaches down to steal the pack of cigarettes from Clint’s shirt pocket. He shakes one out, sticks it between his lips and tosses them onto Clint’s lap.

He doesn’t ask Clint to come but he does grin at him around the cigarette, a little sly, a little expectant, before he slips out the door. 

Clint downs the rest of his beer, cracks another, and follows.

They smoke together quietly, and Clint doesn't do anything.  He could, if he wanted.  Bruce makes it very clear in the way he crowds Clint's space, presses their shoulders together, leans his weight on Clint. 

Clint thinks he's going to commit to this one want.  He finishes his cigarette, steals a last drag from Bruce's, watching him the whole time.  Bruce can't stop looking at Clint's mouth.  He's being really stubborn, Clint decides.  He passes the cigarette back to Bruce and goes inside, pretending not to notice that Bruce's eyes follow him until the door is shut.

 

-o-o-o-

 

Clint listens to Kate’s advice, though.  He starts running in the mornings again, which makes him feel less insane, and helps him excise all the tension that builds up whenever Bruce touches him suddenly and expectantly.  He doesn’t know entirely what to do about it, is waiting for Bruce to do something. He’s not sure if it’s a game, or if it’s just more fun to keep pushing at it until it’s unbearable.  

The only thing is that his running schedule means he sees Bruce off most mornings.  Running or not, this unfulfilled limbo of domestic bliss and the August heat is going to make him lose his mind if Bruce doesn’t make a move real soon.  

He does fix his library card, and ends up making friends with one of the clerks who works circ.  He’s a scrappy young kid, a new-agey mutant who goes to Cooper Union and likes to flaunt how different he is, both by being very outward about his mutation, and very outgoing with his appearance.  Clint thinks he’s hilarious. 

He drags Bruce to a rooftop film, does crossword puzzles in cafes, reads a lot.  He’s starting to almost (almost) feel cultured. Like he really  _ does _ live in Brooklyn.  It’s stupid, but it’s fun to play pretend, he guesses.  He kind of hates that Bruce is tricking him into living the “normal” fantasy, but he’ll admit there’s some perks.  Like getting better at teasing Bruce.

It’s the same thrill he had when they would get into stupid fights, but this time instead of getting all hot and bothered at the way Bruce gets tense and blustery when he's annoyed, it’s the joy at trying to see what he can do to get Bruce a little aroused.  

A lot of it is just tugging at Bruce’s hair when he’s not paying attention.  Like when he comes home in the morning to Bruce, sleep-soft at the counter, waiting for his tea to steep, reading the New Yorker.  He’ll put the coffee maker on, taking his time in the kitchen, making just enough obnoxious noise that Bruce’s brow furrows. Then, on his way to the shower, he’ll run his fingers through Bruce’s hair, tugging at it just a little, enough that Bruce’s breath hitches slightly.  He always blushes across his nose, and on the back of his neck. Clint thinks it’s hot.

 

-o-o-o-

 

He’s also getting really good at taking care of the plants.  

Midway through August one of the weirder ones flowers while Bruce is at work.  Clint literally watches the bud tense and burst open, like a timelapse but in real life.  The thing twists itself around to reach for the patch of sunlight that’s just shy of hitting it.  Clint shifts the upsidedown gallon bucket it’s been set on closer to the sun and frantically texts Kate a picture. 

She’s predictably underwhelmed. 

“I think you’re beautiful.”  Clint tells the plant, and then realizes he is actually losing his mind.  He’s getting out more but he still talks to approximately three people in any given week.  

He decides to bring Bruce lunch. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

He’s never been to the Botanic Gardens.  They're intimidating, and full of people. Clint turns the collar of his jacket up and tries to figure out where he’s going to find Bruce.  He sneaks his way into a private part of the gardens, and finds Bruce in one of the greenhouses. 

Sometimes Clint is still taken by surprise when he sees how regular Bruce does seem most of the time.  For someone who’s had his face plastered all over most major news outlets, and is constantly fretting about the big  _ thing _ inside him he can’t control, Bruce is incredibly convincing as just “some guy.”  Clint guesses he is too, but he doesn’t get to see himself. Bruce, right now, is leaning over a huge fern, it’s so massive it looks like it couldn’t have come from anywhere but a sci-fi movie.  He’s wearing a linen shirt, his glasses are pushed up, holding his hair out of his face, wearing his ugly loafers. He looks kinda hot, and small, and like maybe he could be someone's high school biology teacher.  

“Hey.”  Clint waves at Bruce and holds up a paper bag.  Bruce doesn’t seem to notice at first but the fern does--its huge leaves shudder and twist in on themselves in triple speed and the whole plants curls into a dense bundle of furled fronds, no bigger than a baseball.  Bruce starts just a little, but smiles when he turns to see Clint. 

“Oh! Thanks.”  He takes the proffered bag, his grip lingering against Clint’s for a little too long.  Clint narrows his eyes slightly, and then remembers why he really came. 

“It’s not exciting lunch.”  Bruce laughs. “I came because the little uh…. One of the guys, the plants, bloomed?” 

“Which one?”  Clint pulls up the picture he sent Kate and thrusts his phone at Bruce.  He has to put his glasses on before he can see which it is but when he does his whole face lights up. 

“Oh! That means she’s ready to breed!”  

It’s kind of dumb, Clint realizes, that he’s got it hot for a huge nerd.  Also…

“Do some plants have sex?”  

Bruce stops and looks fully at Clint, blinking slowly.  He laughs. 

“I forget sometimes…” He trails off and looks at Clint fondly.  “No, not really. Sometimes they can reproduce asexually but generally they have to be pollinated, this one in particular.  It’s like, I mean, it’s like what happens when humans have intercourse but it happens a little more indirectly.” 

“Ah.”  Clint nods, conjuring some memories of what Barney had taught him when he was getting his GED.  Clint will readily admit that his education was, and continues to be, rather lacking. “So the bees.” 

“So the bees.”  Bruce nods, and his mouth curves softly.  It’s a smile that Clint has come to recognize as something specific to him, a very quiet laugh that isn’t really laughing at all.  Clint likes it a lot. 

“Take a break doc, lets eat.”  Clint says, and hooks his fingers into Bruce’s belt loop, tugging him away from the cloying heat of the greenhouse. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

Things continue on.  

It’s nearly the end of the month before Clint even gets around to any of what he he wanted at all. 

The night before they stay up too late, drinking shit beer, watching stupid movies.  Bruce gets more drunk than Clint has ever seen him, probably too drunk to be safe, but they stay up anyway.  Bruce follows Clint to the roof after claiming he was going to sleep.  He keeps stealing the cigarettes from Clint’s mouth and laughing when Clint complains.  Clint nearly has to tuck the other man into bed before he falls asleep himself, too euphoric to even worry about nightmares. 

They wake him up anyway, and he sits at the kitchen counter until after sunrise.  He goes out for a run. Bruce is still asleep when he comes back.

After he showers, Clint sleeps for a few more hours.  When he comes out, Bruce is in the bathroom, listening to music from the tinny speakers of his phone.  Clint starts breakfast. He’s too busy thinking to even notice when Bruce comes up behind him.

Bruce places his hand gently on Clint’s waist, turns him so his back is pressed against the counter.  He’s wearing an ugly button down, his hair still damp from the shower, but he’s smiling his Clint smile, determined and careful.

When he kisses Clint there’s a different kind of weight behind it.  Clint relaxes into it, opens easy and kisses back hard. “Fucking, finally.”  Clint says, against his mouth.

Bruce can’t stop smiling.  Clint runs his tongue over Bruce’s teeth, bites his lip gently, and pushes harder.  It’s almost too sweet until Bruce pushes back, pushes himself against Clint, slots his thigh between Clint’s legs and actually puts his hands on him.  

When they break apart to breathe Bruce is flushed and his eyes are bright.  

“I’m getting this out of the way now, so I don’t have to say it after we’ve had sex.” 

Clint hums bumping his nose against Bruce’s jaw and kissing down his throat, biting at the joint between his neck and shoulder. 

“Bad news?” He mumbles against Bruce’s skin, leaving an open mouthed kiss after each word. 

“I have to go back to Tony’s in September, but not forever.  Not planning on going anywhere, just so you know.” Bruce slides a hand into Clint’s hair and gently tugs him back up to kiss him again.  

“I believe you.”  Clint says, and pulls away just enough to make sure Bruce knows he means it.  “Anyway you said something about sex?” 

Bruce laughs and kisses him again, open mouthed and a little messy.  Clint breaks away and tugs them both towards his bedroom. 

Clint pushes Bruce up against the door as soon as they’re inside, pressing hot kisses against his neck and his chest as he unbuttons Bruce’s shirt frantically.  Bruce laughs in between hitched breaths, gasping when Clint pushes Bruce’s shirt aside to mouth at his nipples. 

He pulls Clint up again, pressing their bodies together to kiss him, quick and teasing.  “We can take our time if you want.” 

Clint narrows his eyes at Bruce and pushes him against the door, settling his weight fully against him.  His cock presses against Bruce’s thigh insistently. 

“Fuck you, slow later.  You’re a goddamn tease.”  He grins, winks at Bruce and kisses him again, hot and open and dirty.  Bruce moans a little and shifts his hips, shifts under Clint so their bodies line up better and he can grind against Clint’s cock. 

“Bed, at least.”  Bruce requests and Clint steps back, just enough that they can move but not so far that he can’t keep touching Bruce.  He slaps his ass gently and pushes him down to the mattress on the floor, pulling off his own shirt and tossing it. He slides his boxers off and gets on top of Bruce, caging him in with his arms. 

“You’re pushy.”  Bruce says breathlessly, tilting his head up to give Clint better access to the column of his throat. 

Clint just hums in response and bites a mark into Bruce’s collarbone.  Bruce hisses and hauls Clint up to kiss him again. 

Clint hooks his fingers under the waistband of Bruce’s sweatpants, drags his fingertips against the soft skin of Bruce’s hips and drags the pants down.  Bruce kicks them off, uncoordinated in his franticness to get their bodies against one another, skin to skin. Clint grinds his cock against Bruce’s, slow and teasing, loves the way Bruce’s breath catches, the way he bites Clint’s lip almost too hard. 

“Fuck me.”  He says breathlessly, his hand flexing against Clint’s jaw.  

“Thought you wanted slow.”  Clint grins and kisses Bruce teasingly, before reaching around them both, pulling lube and a condom from underneath his mattress.

Bruce just rolls his eyes and reaches down to wrap his hand around Clint’s cock, stroking him quick and hard to make his point. 

“Flip.”  Clint says, pinching Bruce’s nipple between his fingers and twisting it just enough to elicit a huff of surprised breath from Bruce.  He does, grinding his hips against the mattress impatiently. 

“Shh.”  Clint says, kissing down the column of Bruce’s spine, and slipping a slicked up finger into Bruce, sucking a bruise into his shoulder when Bruce hisses and moans, pushing against Clint. 

“C’mon.”  Bruce says, pushing his ass against Clint’s fingers, grinding back on him.  Clint thrusts a second finger in, moving them in and out, feeling the way Bruce stretches around him.  He pushes in a third before Bruce is totally ready, listens to him hiss, waits for Bruce to relax around him.  Bruce grinds on him and Clint crooks his fingers, presses hot, open mouthed kisses to Bruce’s shoulders when he catches his prostate and Bruce lets out a moan. 

He slips his fingers out then, lines his cock up and pushes in slowly.  Bruce is tight and hot and it takes some self-control to wait until Bruce has relaxed to start thrusting.  He reaches around to wrap his hand around Bruce’s cock, rubbing his thumb over the head, twisting and stroking it in time with his thrusts.  

Bruce cranes his neck and Clint leans down to kiss him, his rhythm faltering.  It’s mostly quiet, Bruce huffing out sighs of arousal and Clint pressing kisses to the nape of his neck, his shoulder blades, their skin slick against each other.  Bruce comes with a twist of Clint’s fist around the base of his cock. He moans and clenches around Clint’s cock, grinding back on him. Clint thrusts harder, hammering into Bruce while he strokes him through his orgasm.   

Clint comes quietly, rocking into Bruce as he comes down from it, his hips stuttering, moving desperately through the last shocks of it.  He pulls out, takes the condom and ties it off, throwing it blindly towards the trashcan in the corner before collapsing beside Bruce, tangling his fingers in the other man’s hair. 

“You missed the trash can.”  Bruce says, pressing soft kisses to the corner of Clint’s mouth, his cheeks, his neck.  

“Whatever.”  Clint says, shifting himself closer to Bruce so their bodies are pressed against each other, their feet tangled together, almost hanging off the edge of the bed. 

They fall asleep like that.

When Clint wakes up, late afternoon sunlight is streaming through his curtains.  Bruce has rolled away, tangled in Clint’s sheets. 

Clint thinks about what Bruce said, about leaving, going back to Tony, whatever.  He almost gets worried about it, sits up with his back against the wall, thinks about going to smoke.  Then he looks to his side and sees the plants lined up against the window, thinks about all of the ones Bruce has left scattered throughout Clint’s apartment.  There’s a kind of solidity there that eases Clint’s fear. 

He leans down to press a kiss to Bruce’s exposed shoulder, and shuffles out of bed to make them breakfast.  


End file.
